Kawabunga Dude has a head full of noodles.
Kawabunga Dude has a head full of noodles.
Edward Hess: The hurdles are higher to starting a business today than they were in 2006. 2006, financing was easier, consumers were spending, jobs were plentiful, if you started a business and failed you could easily go get a job. Today financing is not plentiful. Consumers are not spending and if you fail, getting a job is probably very hard, so I would be very risk adverse today and again I would start a business part time nights and weekends and keep my day job until I was sure it worked unless you had substantial wherewithal, money, family and friends that could support you or the other big if, if you’ve got a big customer who says go start this and I will buy from you and I will help finance you or you’ve got multiple customers.
Let’s say for example you want to open up a deli that you don’t have a great New York deli in the town you live in no matter where that is and you want to have a great deli, thick sandwiches, high quality homemade bread.
Step One: Research the Competition
First you need to do your research. There are very few ideas that I'm going to come up with or you’re going to come up with that are truly unique. Somebody has done it before.
Step Two: Identify Your Compelling Customer Value Proposition
Then I would sit back and say how am I going to be different, what am I going to offer to the customer that is compelling and different that is going to get the customer to change.
Step Three: Start Small
Then I would figure out how to try and start small. For example, I wouldn’t go out and borrow a lot of money in the beginning. I wouldn’t go out and rent space before I even tried. I’d look at either farmers markets or some type of kiosk type situation. How can I make some sandwiches and go out and try and sell them and see what customers think?
Step Four: Get Granular
Then you do the numbers if you will and you go down and say what is it going to cost me a month an my operating expenses. If my operating expenses are $5,000 a month how many sandwiches do I have to sell every day?
I would be cautious, conservative. Experiment, try, build up a customer base, but I wouldn’t take a lot of financial risk in today’s marketplace unless you have a big nest egg.
Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses by Kevin D. Freeman, originally published in June 2009.
CSPAN Rep Paul Kanjorski Reviews the Bailout Situation
A note on the video states the following which should be double-checked for accuracy as well.
Kanjorski's recollection of the dates may be inaccurate. The NYT shows the bank run as happening on the 17th 18th not the 11th. Some have alleged a 911 connection making the bank run an attack on the nation, but the failure of Lehman seems to have triggered widespread panic which accounts for the bank run.
Cf. http://a1b5jj.blogspot.com/2009/03/confusion-in-ranks-tarp-prevented-total.html
Chu, now Obama's energy secretary, seems to be getting his wish.
Teresa Forcades Presentation On H1 N1
[The text below is not a word by word transcript. It is the Dr. Forcades' written summary, with supporting sources and footnotes. We suggest you view the video before reading the written summary, Global Research Editor]
SOME THOUGHTS AND A PROPOSAL WITH REGARD TO ‘SWINE FLU’
September 16, 2009 (modified on October 11, 2009) Dr. Teresa Forcades i Vila, MD (ABIM 1995, 2005), PhD in public health (UB 2004)
This is a translation of the Catalan original version published on Dr. Forcades’ blog at www.catalunyareligio.cat
1. RELEVANT SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION-
The first two reported cases of swine flu (virus A/HINI, strain S-OIV) were diagnosed in California (USA) on April 17, 2009 1.
- The swine flu is not new because it is type A, neither is it new because it is of the subtype H1N1: the flu epidemic in 1918 was of the type A/H1N1 and since 1977 the virus A/H1N1 circulates during the flu season each year 2; the only novelty is the S- OIV strain. 3 .4
- One-third of people older than 60 seem to be immune to the virus of the swine flu 5.
- Since it began until 15 September, 2009, 137 people have died from this flu in Europe and 3,559 worldwide 6. One must remember that each year, in Europe alone, between 40,000 and 220,000 people die because of the flu 7.
- Recognised health specialists, among whom are Dr. Bernard Debré, (member of the French National Ethics committee) and Dr. Juan José Rodriguez Sendín (president of the Spanish Association of Medical Colleges) have publicly declared that the information obtained from the flu season in the southern hemisphere, shows that the swine flu has a lower mortality rate and complications rate than the annual flu 8.
2. IRREGULARITIES WHICH SHOULD BE EXPLAINED
- At the end of January, 2009, the Austrian subsidiary of the North American pharmaceutical company, Baxter, delivered 72 kilos of vaccine material to 16 laboratories in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovenia 9. A laboratory technician from the company, BioTest in the Czech Republic decided on his own to test the vaccines in ferrets.
Ferrets are being used since 1918 to study the influenza vaccines: all the vaccinated ferrets died. Then the material sent by Baxter was investigated to find out what it actually was and it was discovered that it contained live bird flu virus (virus A/H5N1) combined with live seasonal flu virus (virus A/H3N2).
If this contamination had not been discovered on time, the pandemic that without a real basis is being proclaimed by health authorities at the global (WHO) and at the local level, could now be a horrific reality. This combination of live viruses is potentially lethal because it combines a virus that has a 60% mortality rate and a low infectivity rate (the virus of the bird flu), with a virus that has a low mortality rate and a high infectivity rate (a seasonal flu virus) 10.
- On the 29 April, 2009, 12 days after the detection of the first cases of the swine flu, Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the WHO, declared that the level of alert because of the danger of pandemic was phase 5 (on a scale 1-6) and ordered all governments of the member states of the WHO to activate emergency plans and maximum health alert. A month and a half later, on June 11, 2009, Dr. Chan declared that the A/H1N1 S-OIV pandemic was a reality (phase 6) 11. How could she declare a pandemic if according to the scientific data exposed above, the swine flu is milder than the seasonal flu, and the A/H1N1 is not a new virus but only a new strain of a very well known virus that a subset of the population recognizes immunologically?
Declaring a pandemic was possible despite these circumstances because in early May, the WHO had changed its definition of what a pandemic is. Prior to May, 2009, the definition of pandemic took into account the severity of the disease, which is the most relevant aspect with regard to the clinical and the political handling of a pandemic. However, this requirement was eliminated from the definition in May, 2009 12. The change occurred shortly after the United States declared a state of “national health emergency” despite having only 20 people infected with the swine flu virus and no deaths whatsoever 13.
3. POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DECLARATION OF PANDEMIC
- In the context of a pandemic, it is possible to require mandatory vaccination of a given segment of the people or even of the whole population 14. - What can happen to a person who decides not to accept the vaccination? As long as it has not been decreed that the vaccination is mandatory, he/she is free to do so: but if the vaccination is decreed mandatory, then the State has the obligation to enforce the law by imposing a fine or a term in prison (in the state of Massachusetts, the proposed fine in this case could be as high as 1,000 dollars for each day that goes without vaccination) 15.
- Taking this into account, one could reasonably conclude: if the vaccination is made mandatory, then I will just go along and get vaccinated; after all, the vaccine is more or less the same as that of the annual flu, so no big deal.
- It is necessary to know that there are three new features that make the swine flu vaccine different from the annual flu vaccine. The first novelty is that the majority of pharmaceutical companies are designing the vaccine in such a way that one injection will not be enough and each person will need to get two doses.
The WHO also recommends to receive the seasonal flu vaccine. As a result, whoever follows this year’s WHO recommendations exposes him or herself to be injected three times. This is something new which, theoretically, multiplies by three the possible toxicities. In practice, there is no way to know the long-term effects of this triple injection because it has never been done in this way before. The second novelty is that some of the companies making the swine flu vaccine have decided to use co-adjuvants which are far more potent than those contained in the seasonal flu vaccine. Co-adjuvants are substances added to a vaccine to booster the immune system: the swine flu vaccine from Glaxo-Smith-Kline, for example, contains ASO3 (a combination of squalene and polysorbate), a co-adjuvant able to increase ten times the immune response. The problem with this rationale is that no one can be sure that this artificial stimulus to the immune system will not provoke serious autoimmune diseases (like Guillain-Barré paralysis) 16.
The third novelty that distinguishes the swine flu vaccine from that of each year is that the manufacturing companies are demanding that the States sign agreements so that they will have impunity if the vaccines have more side effects than expected (e.g. the Guillain-Barré paralysis may affect 10 people in every million who are vaccinated with the annual flu vaccine): The USA has signed a document which frees the politicians and the pharmaceutical companies from all responsibilities associated with unexpected side effects of the swine flu vaccine 17.
SOME THOUGHTS
If the contamination of the vaccine material from Baxter had not been accidentally discovered, an extremely grave pandemic could be by now a shocking reality. The appalling lack of political and mass media reaction to what happened in February in the Czech laboratory it is inexplicable. What is even more inexplicable is the degree of irresponsibility demonstrated by the WHO, by governments and by the national health agencies in declaring a pandemic and promoting a maximum health alert without a real rational basis. It is irresponsible and inexplicable, in the extreme, that billions of Euros from public funds have been spent to manufacture millions of doses of vaccines against a non-existent danger, while there is not sufficient money to help the millions of people (more than 5 million in the US alone) who due to the current economic crisis have lost their job and their home.
As long as these facts remain unexplained, the risk that contaminated vaccines could be distributed this winter and the risk that legal measures could be adopted to mandate vaccination are very real. They should not be underestimated. If the swine flu continues to be as mild as it has been up to now, it does not make sense to expose oneself to the risk of a contaminated vaccine nor run the risk of suffering a Guillain-Barré partial paralysis. If the flu turns unexpectedly worse, as it has been predicted with no scientific basis by quite a few people in high office - among them the General Director of the WHO -, it would still make no sense to allow oneself to be vaccinated: a rise in mortality could mean only two things:
1. that the virus of the S-OIV strain which is circulating now has suffered a mutation;
2. that another virus (or other viruses) are now circulating. In both cases, the vaccine that is being currently prepared will be useless, and, considering what happened last February in the Baxter Pharmaceutical Company, it could even be the means of transmitting the disease.
A PROPOSAL
My proposal is clear: Along with staying calm, do take common sense precautions to avoid infection and avoid getting vaccinated I make a call to urgently activate the legal instruments and the necessary citizen participation to assure, in a rotund manner, that no one in our country will be forced to be vaccinated against his/her will, and that those who freely accept to be vaccinated will not be deprived of their right to claim grievance and be compensated (they or their family) if the vaccine causes them illness or death.
NOTES
1 Zimmer SM Burke, Historical Perspective: Emergence of Influenza A (HINI) viruses. NEJM, July 16, 2009. p. 279.
2 “The re-emergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of the waning population immunity to HI and NI antigens”, Zimmer, Burke, ibid. p. 282.
3 Zimmer, Bunker, ibid. p. 279.
4 Doshi, Peter, Calibrated response to emerging infections. BMJ 2009: 399: b3471.
5 US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Serum cross-reactive antibody response to a novel influenza A (HINI) virus after vaccination with seasonal influenza vaccine. MMWR 2009: 58; 521- 4
6 Official Data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (www.ecdc.europa.eu)
7 Official Data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (www.ecdc.europa.eu)
8 Cf. Debré: Cette grippe n’est pas dangereuse. Le Journal du Dimanche, July 25, 2009. Cf. Rodríguez Sendín: Cordura frente el alarmismo en la prevención de la gripe A. La Razón, September 4, 2009.
9 Baxter denied that the contaminated product were to manufacture vaccines for human use and called it ‘experimental virus material’. Baxter failed to reveal for what use it was because doing so would give away proprietary information about Baxter's production process. Cf. The Canadian Press: Baxter admits flu product contained live bird flu. February 27, 2009.
10 Cf. Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic. The Times of India, science section, 6, March 2009.
11 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2009
12 Cohen E. When a pandemic isn’t a pandemic. CNN, 4 May, ’09. http://edition,cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/04/swine.flu.pandemic/index.html
13 Doshi, Peter: Calibrated response to emerging infections. BMJ 2009; 339:b3471
14 Falkiner, Keith. Get the rush flu jab or be jailed: Irish Star, Sunday 13 September, 2009. 15 Senate Bill n. 2028: An act relative to pandemic and disaster preparation and response in the Commonwealth. 4 August, ’09. Cf Moore, RT. Critics rage as state prepares for flu pandemic. 11 Sept. ’09. WBUR Boston.
16 Cf. Vaccination HINI: méfiance des infirmiéres. www.syndicat-infirmier.com/Vaccination-HINI- mefiance-des.htlm
17 Stobbe, Mark. Legal immunity set for swine flu vaccine makers. Associated press 17 July,’09.
"They're sitting on the money, they're using it for their own -- they're putting it someplace else with no interest in helping you with our life, with that money. We've allowed them to take that. That's not theirs, that's a national resource, that's ours. We all have this, we all benefit from this or we all suffer as a result of not having it," Michael Moore told Laura Flanders of GRITtv.
"I think we need to go back to taxing these people at the proper rates. They need to, uh, we need to see these jobs as something we some, that we collectively own as Americans and you can't just steal our jobs and take them someplace else," Moore concluded.
Oil and natural gas produced here in the United States are likely to still account for at least 57 percent of domestic energy consumption by 2035.
When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar heads before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday, Americans — particularly the 9.2 million directly or indirectly working in the oil and gas industry — would be ill served if the question isn’t asked: Are the thousands, and counting, of out-of-work Americans in the Gulf region and beyond a worthwhile consequence of your department’s freeze?
The Interior Department’s six-month moratorium on offshore oil production has cost 8,169 jobs, according to a study by one Louisiana State University professor, along with more than $487 million in wages and nearly $98 million in forfeited state tax revenues in the Gulf states alone.
This doesn’t include the impact felt nationwide by truckers who transport goods, farmers who use oil to raise and harvest crops and working families paying more at the pump.
TubeChop is handy for eliminating parts of a video you do not want and to select only portions to show.
An alternative is SnipSnip.It.
To ask questions while the video is playing you can use VideoANT.
Financial subversion carried out by "unknown parties" contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system. The Pentagon contractor adds a new element: “outside forces,” a factor the federal government's report did not examine. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission blamed the crash on such economic factors as high-risk mortgage lending practices and poor federal regulation and supervision which is only part of the story.
According to the author, Kevin D. Freeman, in his report "Economic Warfare, suspects include financial enemies in Middle Eastern states, Islamists, hostile members of the Chinese military, or government and organized crime groups in Russia, Venezuela or Iran. Chinese military officials publicly have suggested using economic warfare against the U.S.
Asked by The Times who he thought to be the most likely behind the financial attacks, Mr. Freeman said: “Unfortunately, the two major strategic threats, radical jihadists and the Chinese, are among the best positioned in the economic battle space.”
Also, the report lists as suspects advocates of Islamic law, who have publicly called for opposition to capitalism as a way to promote what they regard as the superiority of Islam.
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A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.